Main Street’s Fletcher’s aims for upscale setting

The plan all along for Sue Demarest and her husband Steve was to open their new Main Street restaurant, Fletcher’s, in November. As they’re first-time restaurant owners, that would have given them plenty of time to work out the kinks before Park City’s winter crowd flocks to town.

But plans don’t always work out. Construction delays and the lengthy process of getting the necessary permits delayed the restaurant’s opening until this week. It was set to open today, Dec. 20.

While that won’t give the restaurant much time to prepare for the large Main Street crowds, Demarest said the prospect of the culmination of years of work is an exciting one.

"We’re just lucky to be opening now," she said. "We didn’t want to miss the season. But it’s exciting. We hope that everyone likes the food and the atmosphere."

The highlight is a menu of food made with organic ingredients, Demarest said. The options include dishes such as peanut-crusted salmon, seared buffalo bites with fondue and mushroom carpaccio, among many others.

"Everything is made with familiar ingredients," she said. "There’s nothing on here that you should be like, ‘What is that?’ Because some restaurants are going with a trend right now to put in ingredients like that, so customers come in and have no idea what they’re eating. We didn’t want to go that way."

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Apart from the food, Demarest expects the lounge bar on the bottom level to also be a big draw. It has an upscale feel designed to engender a welcoming atmosphere. Dimly lit, the bar will play lounge music, allowing people to sit back, relax and converse while they’re drinking.

"We want people to come in and feel at home," she said.

Demarest’s desire to bring an upscale restaurant and bar to Main Street stems from her past. She and Steve previously lived in Las Vegas, where all the nightclubs feature that type of setting. When they bought a house in Park City five years ago, they found there wasn’t that type of environment on Main Street.

"A lot of people want somewhere to go after dinner to have a drink and hang out and maybe have dessert," she said. "And sometimes they want it in an upscale environment. So we’re trying to bring a little of that here."

It took a little bit of luck for the Demarests to even end up in Park City. Steve, a stock broker, had always wanted a house in the mountains. But they began looking for a second home in Colorado, at Vail, Aspen and Steamboat Springs, and found that none had the ease-of-access they desired.

When they discovered Park City, they fell in love, eventually moving to the town full-time.

"We just love it," she said. "It’s a small town with such nice people."

While they’ve enjoyed living in Park City and undertaking the task of opening a restaurant, it hasn’t always been easy. For example, Fletcher’s waited 14 months to receive its liquor license from the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control before finally getting it Wednesday, just days before it was set to open.

"Every month he went in and Steve made his plea of why we should get one," Demarest said. "We were definitely lucky."

But now that the restaurant is set to welcome customers, liquor license in tow, Demarest is just happy to be joining the long list of dining options on Main Street.

"Everyone who comes here says the food is so good," Demarest said. "We have so many good restaurants. The town itself is just this one little street, and on that street, there are so many great places to go. I think it’s a good fit."